Control (Book Seven) (Fated Saga Fantasy Series) (32 page)

“What is it?” he asked her.

“It’s like... it’s like... home,” she answered, unsure she even knew what she meant. “Like we are it and it is us.”

He didn’t need to ask what she meant. It made perfect sense to him.

“I’m going to activate it,” Colin warned her.

He had no idea how to do it, or how to use the
Stone to suck the immortality out of the Grosvenor.

The Grosvenor.
..

Colin
let go of the Stone.

They were trying to escape again.

“No,” Colin spoke quite evenly
.

The darkness returned, filling him again with the desire to end these foul creatures.
He raised his right arm, the Grosvenor rising off the floor.

He squeezed his hand shut.

They started gasping and choking, their limbs flailing.

He touched the S
tone with his left arm, feeling its power surging through his body.

He allowed it to build up inside of him.

Ivan and Sebastien approached Meghan and pulled her back near Catrina’s cell. It was strange, this effect the Stone had on her, almost like it really did belong to her.

She could feel in Coli
n’s mind, how it felt to him.

She could feel the point where they fel
t the same, like somehow this Stone was theirs. It felt comfortable and welcoming.

But then she could sense where his Projector’s powers took over,
grasping onto the Stone’s power, enhancing it, controlling it, energizing it to work to Colin’s liking.

Colin opened his hand and the
flailing Grosvenor slumped to the floor. With a flick of his wrist, the hoods dissolved off their robes, leaving behind petrified faces.

Colin wanted to see the life
sucked out of their eyes.

Meghan shuddered. She left Colin’s mind. She didn’t want to see or feel anymore.
It wasn’t about just ending the reign of the Grosvenor, or freeing Catrina, it was about killing them and watching them die. He wanted to watch them suffer.

Something about this frightened her more so
than even Colby’s actions; he wasn’t afraid to kill either, but she had never felt Colby filled with the pure desire for the kill. Colby did it out of obligation to his father. Always to please his father.

Colin thirsted for it.

“Are you okay?” Ivan asked Meghan.

She breathed out a long cleansing breath.
This far back from the Stone, the draw seemed lessened. Perhaps it had just been the act of touching it. She turned to Ivan and almost didn’t answer. He didn’t look anymore okay than she felt.

“
Um, I’m okay,” she stuttered. “Really. I am. Colin... he’s not okay.” She could not help but glance back at Catrina and shake her head, as if to say sorry. Catrina could do nothing but stand and watch.

Colin
felt the power of the Stone awakening inside him. He gave the Magicante a moment to understand the power and allow it to enhance Colin’s own strength. Colin let go of the Stone. He was now connected with it and no longer needed to touch it.

He faced the Grosvenor, his arms lifted back over his head as if trying to pull something. His arms flung forward, a gush of
white light pulling out of the Stone behind him, rushing down his arms and into the bodies of the Grosvenor.

They let out terrifying wails as th
e light penetrated their bodies, sliding through like worms seeking out the magic that had been used to create their immortality.

When Colin felt the S
tone had pulled every drop out of them, he spun around and threw the streams of light back into the Stone.

When the last of the stream reentere
d the Stone, he turned on the spot and stalked over to what remained of the Grosvenor.

“Pitiful,” he spat
their shriveled carcasses.

Colin ignored Meghan’s attempts to reach into his mind.

He ignored her when she called out his name, pleading for him to stop.

He heard Catrina shouting
, but did not look.

They all seemed distant. Far away.

And he didn’t need them.

This was his fight.
He would end this.

Ivan and Sebastien
had to hold on to Meghan to keep her from getting into Colin’s way. She wanted him to stop. He didn’t need to kill them, the Grosvenor would die on their own, probably within minutes.

They watched Colin standing over the sickly looking remains of the Grosvenor.
 

“I can’t let him do this,” cried
Meghan. “You can’t feel what’s inside him right now. I can,” she told Ivan and Sebastien.

They knew she might be right, but they didn’t know how to stop Colin. The look on his face was
venomous.

Colin lifted a finger and swept it across the
bodies of the dying Grosvenor, gashes slitting across their throats. Spurting blood muting hideous screams as their life force drained out of them.

A wild
laugh grabbed Colin’s attention. His head flitted upwards, staring down the mirrored face of Freyne Rothrock.

“So easy. So easy,” Freyne shrieked
in hysterical delight. “As I said before, predictable!”

Colin’s body moved so fast no one saw it until it was suddenly standing in
directly in front of Freyne’s mirror.

“Predict this!”
Colin’s deadly voice taunted.

He thrust his arm into the glass
.

Not a crack or a break.

He enclosed his hand around Freyne’s neck, wrenching his body through the glass.

Meghan wanted Freyne dead, too. But not like this. Not at
the cost of her brother’s descent into darkness.

Her vision, in which she killed him,
was becoming too real. A possibility she might actually have to face.

She didn’t realize she was shaking uncontrollably
.

Ivan
jumped in front of her, leaving Sebastien to restrain her.

Ivan wracked his brain trying to think of anything that might give Colin pause. To give him a chance to stop.

Meghan couldn’t watch any more. She turned inside Sebastien’s grasp and looked away. He held her tight, no matter what, he wouldn’t let her turn back.

Colin dragged Freyne
’s body across the floor.

Freyne grabbed at the floor, trying to stop himself.

Colin stopped and rolled Freyne over so that he could see his eyes.

Freyne’s palm faced
Colin, ready to strike.

Colin sensed the magic starting to emerge and said, “No.”

Freyne’s spell fizzled. His eyes widening in the realization that he was about to lose.

“Apparently,
” said Colin, his chest heaving, “you didn’t hear me when I told you
not
to go back on our agreement.”

Colin grasped
Freyne around his neck.

No magic. Just pure adrenaline stoked muscle.

Catrina knew she was losing him. If he allowed himself to kill in a manner so cold and uncaring, he’d forever be taken down a path to darkness. She never see her beloved Colin surface again.

She did the only thing she could do.

She let out a bloodcurdling scream.

It reverberated through
out the barn, shaking what remained of the walls, rattling anything still hanging, hurting their ears to hear.

Colin
let go of Freyne, standing, staring into Catrina’s prison cell.

Sebastien lost his grip on Meghan, she twisted around, needing to see what was happening.

Catrina stopped, staring back into Colin’s eyes, searching for any sign that he was still present. “You have to want to be good,” she reminded him, her tone pleading for him to remember what Jasper had taught him.

Colin looked down at his hands and then down at Freyne,
now trying to crawl his way out of the barn.

Colin stumbled backwards.

“What... what have I done?” He fell to his knees as if suddenly deflated, with nothing left to give.

He saw the pile of bodies that
had once been the Grosvenor.

He didn’t feel sorry they were dead. They deserv
ed it.

But why did they deserve it? Because he decided so?

No
, he told himself. They were evil. Not on the side of good.

“What side am I on?” he mumbled.
Am I still good?

He stood back up, taking a few
disoriented steps towards Catrina.

A spell whizzed
by his ear, buzzing as it zinged by, hitting the nearly invisible wall still imprisoning Catrina with a smack. It crackled against the dust-bone wall, spreading like electricity across it, down to the ground and up to the ceiling.

Colin heard a laugh
, which he knew at that very moment, would be Freyne Rothrock’s last.

“I’ll teach you to mess with...” Freyne didn’t finish his sentence.

Colin spun around and threw out his arm.

H
e flung Freyne’s body through the air slamming him against the Immortality Stone. Colin once again activated the Stone.

Streams of light
reached out of the Stone like tendrils, ripping into Freyne’s body. He bellowed hideously, kicking and flailing his leathered arms and legs as the light stole away his immortality.

But it wasn’t enough.
It wouldn’t kill him.

Colin let the light rip him apart,
tearing into Freyne’s very soul, piece by piece until there was nothing left.

The moment Freyne’s life ended, the dust-bone wall
surrounding Catrina quivered. It was breaking up. The magic must have been tied to Freyne’s life. It wouldn’t break until his death.

“If it explod
es and hits Colin,” said Meghan, stopping as she suddenly could not vocalize what she was thinking. She had to ask herself what she wanted to let happen.

Let the bo
nes hit Colin and maybe, just maybe, they’d take away Colin’s Projectorism? She didn’t think it could actually kill him. Colin was immortal, a true immortal, unlike Jasper Thorndike.

Or was she just kidding herself, thinking
these bones could do the job she could not bring herself to accept she might have to do.

No. Colin would always be her brother, no matter what. She had made him that promise.
She wouldn’t see him harmed. She refused to accept that her vision might ever come true.

She raised her palm and cast a defensive s
pell, putting up a shield around the prison. Ivan and Sebastien followed her lead. How would they allow the spell to break, keep Catrina safe, and not hurt Colin in the process?

“Catrina!” shouted Colin behind them.

With all the power he had at his disposal, he was utterly powerless against this one stupid thing. These bones.

Meghan dropped her spell, allowing Ivan and Sebastien to hold theirs.

“I wan
t to try something,” she told them all.

“Meghan,” call
ed out Colin, his tone, pleading.

She just threw him a look that said, trust me.

Meghan stood in front of the nearly invisible wall and placed her hands up to it. She felt a light zap when her hands sank into it.

“What are you doing?” asked
Ivan.

“I’m going to burn the bones
,” she replied.

A fire spre
ad out from her hands, expanding, almost as if eating the bone as it licked its hot tendrils against the dust-bone wall. Meghan concentrated hard, making sure the fire spread only where she wanted it to.

The fire
circled back around to her, the wall completely eaten away. She let go with an exhausted groan.

It had worked. The bones were gone. The prison was no more.

Catrina came rushing out, the prison walls broken.

Colin came rushing forward.

They wrapped themselves around each other.

“I will never, ever,
ever
let you out of my sight again,” Colin swore to her.

She just whimpered softly, relieved to be back in his arms and out of her cage.
Relieved that she had not lost him.

The Grosvenor we
re dead, except for Fazendiin.

Colin had not completely crossed a line he could not come back from.

And they were all alive.

They were not okay. They were injured, exhausted, battered and in some ways, broken.

But they were alive and it was over.